It was old home week!

Gathering of the Far Left for a New Weather Report:

The far left in America has not had a lot to celebrate recently. So a good-size crowd, and not all of it graybeards, turned up at Columbia Law School on Thursday evening for a party in honor of a new book, "No Surrender: Selected Writings of an Anti-Imperialist Political Prisoner," by David Gilbert.

Mark Rudd, who as a member of Students for a Democratic Society led the antiwar demonstrations that shut down Columbia in the spring of 1968, was there, along with an assortment of Black Panther alumni and former members of the Weathermen.

Woohoo! All the usual pond scum.

The guest of honor had a slight problem attending though:

Mr. Gilbert himself was unable to attend, except via a recorded message in which he sent a "loving anti-imperialist hug" to everyone. He has been a prisoner in the New York State correction system since 1982 and will not be eligible for parole until 2056. His 23-year-old son, Chesa Boudin, was on hand, though — tall, handsome and articulate and just back from Merton College, Oxford, where he is finishing his first year as a Rhodes Scholar. Mr. Boudin (whose first name means "dancing feet" in Swahili) is left-wing royalty — or he would be if the left wing did not disapprove of royalty.

Mr. Boudin's mother is Kathy Boudin. In 1981 she and Mr. Gilbert, then a leader of the Weather Underground, and several others were arrested after a notorious incident in Nanuet, N.Y. The group attempted to hold up a Brink's truck, though Mr. Gilbert later said it had not been a robbery, strictly speaking, but an "armed action" intended to "expropriate" funds that properly belonged to the black community. A Brink's guard was shot to death while loading moneybags into the back of the truck, and two police officers were later killed at a roadblock in nearby Nyack, N.Y.

The radicals were all charged with robbery and second-degree murder. Two of them, Ms. Boudin and Samuel Brown, hired conventional lawyers and defended themselves in court. The others, including Mr. Gilbert, boycotted their own trial, claiming that they belonged to the Provisional Government of New Afrika and should be treated as prisoners of war according to the Geneva Conventions.

Ms. Boudin, who eventually expressed remorse and sought forgiveness, was paroled last summer and reunited with her son, who was just 14 months old when she was sent to jail. Mr. Gilbert, unrepentant, still claims to be the political prisoner of an imperialist United States government.

Rot. In. Hell. Asshat. And your royal offspring too.

There are more social notes which are largely forgettable, but check this out:

The second-biggest cheer of the evening went to Susan Rosenberg, a former member of the Weather Underground pardoned by President Bill Clinton. She said, "We hated Reagan, damn it," and went on to tell a story about a friend who stopped smoking pot the day of President Ronald Reagan's inauguration because he knew "things were about to get serious."
...
No one mentioned the three people killed in the robbery.

Sue, the fact that you and your little pals are still wasting oxygen shows that things didn't get serious enough.

Where's Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm when you need her?

Mickey Kaus (scroll down to June 8) reveals an impending hilarity explosion:

"And Now I Will Project a Cheery Optimism:" LAT's Gold and La Ganga outline Kerry's somewhat formulaic efforts to "cast his candidacy in sunny sheen." Here, for example, is what they call the "upbeat" ending to his recent speech on bioterrorism:

"But leadership is about telling the truth, and it is about talking about the real choices we face as Americans in order to be stronger. I know we can be stronger here at home."

Whoa there! Don't use up all the soaring rhetoric at once! ... How silly is the Kerry camp's attempt to fake it for 6 months by pretending that Kerry's an upbeat figure? Kerry's not even convincingly sunny for 10 seconds in his new "positive" 30 second spot, "Optimists." Any warm, upbeat human incidents Kerry aide Tad Devine can gather will be overwhelmed in a war with the daily drone of Kerry's pompous default speaking voice. Face it--he's The Man from Mope!

Off hand, I'd say that it's an endemic problem for all liberals - it's hard putting on a happy face when the first words out of your mouth are "Things are terrible and it's all our fault." (Of course things have been terrible for years despite all their social tinkering, but you don't want to interrupt the flow with any petty details.) But not to worry:

P.P.S.: So far, Kerry's best "charm" witness is ... intern Alexandra Polier! She says Kerry was "flirtatious and funny"!

Hmmm, I wouldn't play that card too often.

Ronald Wilson Reagan, 1911 - 2004.

His job here is done.

Woohoo! The UN is here to help!

U.N. Resolution Sparks Wave of Peace in Iraq:

"Finally, we have the legitimacy we crave," said an unnamed member of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's militia. "With the blessing of France, Germany and Russia through the U.N., we may now enjoy the fruits of freedom. I can't wait to give a flower to the first blue-helmeted U.N. peacekeeper that I meet."

It's ScrappleFace.

Here's a shock!

Bubba says it's all about him:

Former President Bill Clinton has privately expressed anger he has apparently been left off the speakers list of Friday's Reagan State Funeral, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

It would be a waste of time trying to explain to Bubba how a gentleman should behave and that he ought to shut his pie hole. But not to worry, Bubba fans! There are always memories of funerals past like Ron Brown's and Paul Wellstone's.

Pond Scum Spotting

The virulent venom of frustrated rage:

The lot of the no-account eastcoast libsnob longhaired artsyfartsy slagpunk francophile comsymp is not a happy one. Not this week.

All of America and much of the world is celebrating the life of a man who actually changed the course of history, and, for once, for the better. But not quite everyone.

And their knickers are definitely in a twist. Follow the link for some examples, but here's the deal:

What turns these unworthies a shade of crispy brown is not that they think Ronald Reagan actually fits any of their purple descriptions, but that he transformed, and transformed irretrievably, the politics not only of his country, but of the world.

Margaret Thatcher got it right when she said more than a decade ago that Mr. Reagan's greatest accomplishment was that "he has achieved the most difficult of political tasks, changing attitudes and perceptions about what is possible."

A generation has risen almost to maturity that cannot remember that only yesterday the triumph of free men and women over the blight of communist tyranny was no sure thing. When Ronald Reagan came to office in 1981, the Soviet Union looked no worse than even money to win the Cold War. Powerful, reasonable voices were raised suggesting that the best the West could achieve was to make a subservient peace with the communists.

If you are too young to remember the spiritual miasma of Jimmy Carter in office, consider yourself lucky. His operative philosophy was "It's all our fault." Sounds familiar, doesn't it? We're damn lucky we had Ron to banish Jimmy back to the farm before his screw-ups became irretrievable.

But back to the pond scum - it's clear that they have their talking points all lined up, which I would summarize as "No big deal". Here's Arty Schlesinger and the "intellectuals":

Writing on Ronald Reagan's achievements in Newsweek, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. notes, "Reagan's admirers contend that his costly re-armament program caused the Soviet collapse. Maybe so; but surely the thing that did in the Russians was that time had proved communism an economic, political and moral disaster."

Funny: Here's Schlesinger in 1982, observing that "Those in the United States who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic and social collapse" are "wishful thinkers who are only kidding themselves."

Tsk, Arty's just a tad forgetful, I guess. But wait, there's more!

Many historians and pundits have refused to credit Ronald Reagan's policies for helping to bring about the Cold War victory, blaming communism's chronic economic problems. Yet, like Scheslinger, they failed to describe it as inevitable while Reagan was actually in office.

In 1982, the learned Sovietologist Seweryn Bialer of Columbia University wrote in Foreign Affairs: "The Soviet Union is not now nor will it be during the next decade in the throes of a true systemic crisis, for it boasts enormous unused reserves of political and social stability."

But the genius award undoubtedly goes to Lester Thurow, an MIT economist and well-known author who, as late as 1989, wrote: "Can economic command significantly . . . accelerate the growth process? The remarkable performance of the Soviet Union suggests that it can. . . . Today the Soviet Union is a country whose economic achievements bear comparison with those of the United States."

Throughout the 1980s, most of these pundits derisively condemned Reagan's policies. Strobe Talbott of Time magazine faulted the Reagan administration for espousing "the early '50s goal of rolling back Soviet domination of Eastern Europe," an objective he considered misguided and unrealistic.

Ole Strobe ("all states will recognize a single, global authority") was rewarded for his perspicacity with a gig in the Clinton State Department. I guess we're just lucky the single, global authority didn't feature Marx and Lenin.

But I digress. More pond scum spotting here and here.

Peter Bronson sums up:

Remove the filler, and here's the national media's obituary for Ronald Reagan in 12 words: "Great communicator. Star Wars. Trickle down. Iran-Contra, Iran-Contra, Iran-Contra."

Of course, it's much longer than that. There's a lot more in there about Iran-Contra, I think. But that's what we get when we turn our first draft of history over to the liberal elites. It's like giving firearms to chimpanzees.

Pete's too polite.

It just gets better

Heinz Kerry's speech is wrong address:

TERESA Heinz Kerry didn't exactly knock 'em dead with her keynote address at last Thursday's New York State Democratic Jefferson-Jackson dinner, Post City Hall bureau man Stefan C. Friedman reports. Most high-ranking officials had already taken off before Sen. John Kerry's wife began her speech nearly an hour late, and those who remained were treated to an often-rambling missive delivered just above a whisper. A particularly uncomfortable moment came when the ketchup heiress commented that if her late husband, Republican Sen. John Heinz of Pennsylvania, were still alive, he likely would have been at the dinner supporting her current husband. The morbid moment was met with uncomfortable silence.

When you're rich, no one cares about your cognitive dysfunctions.

Some things you just can't make up

"There were giants in the earth in those days "